Saturday, August 31, 2013

Gas masks and dancing soldiers

"The U.S. Army awaits
orders reads one headline." “The countdown has started" announces
another; on a photo of submarines and aircraft were superimposed Obama and
Assad facing each other, like two in a Wild West showdown.

Israeli citizens were
not impressed by experts telling them that there is only a "low
probability" of a Syrian attack on Israel in retaliation for an American
assault. The demand for gas masks immediately jumped up, and there was revealed
again what was already known - that the government had not taken care to
provide enough masks for all Israeli citizens. Personally, I did not join the
race. After all, since the end of the First World War nobody in the world has
used chemical weapons against an enemy who could respond in kind…

Meanwhile, the countdown
slowed down a bit after the British Parliament's vote and accelerated again
with the speech by Secretary of State Kerry. A speech rather similar to
the "smoking guns" speech which Colin Powell delivered at the UN
ten years ago on behalf of George W. Bush – with not a trace of those
Smoking Guns found after the Americans invaded and occupied Iraq. But that does
of course not mean that again now the evidence is false.

Had Obama been really
enthusiastic to intervene in the Syrian Civil War, he could have found plenty
of reasons and justifications for his actions in the gory acts of Bashar Assad
over the past two years - even before the massive use of gas in the suburbs of
Damascus . But this is a president who prides himself on having brought
American troops back from Iraq and who prepares to evacuate Afghanistan as
well. He certainly does not wish to wade into a new, particularly murky, Middle
Eastern swamp. In fact, over the past year Obama had chosen to overlook several
instances of the "minor" use of gas resulting in "only"
dozens of casualties.

Still, it is hard to see
how Obama can avoid adhering to the Red Line set by himself, and ignore the
harrowing photos of children suffocated to death which flooded the global media
. Unless ... unless the unexpected happens when Obama comes to Russia on his
scheduled visit in the middle of next week. Unless the Americans and Russians
overcome the Cold War which has returned to our world also without Communism ,
and Obama and Putin roll up their sleeves and impose some kind of political
solution on their respective clients in Syria. Or at least a more or less
stable ceasefire, which would save the lives of many. What are the chances of
that? Higher or lower than the likelihood that superpower intervention will
lead to an end of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

And meanwhile, what is
really going on between Israel and the Palestinians? Over the decades, Israeli
governments have always tried to exploit situations where the spotlight was
directed elsewhere , and create new accomplished facts while the world was not
looking. In 1956, when international attention was focused on the Soviet
invasion of Hungary, David Ben Gurion – supported by Britain and France -
launched a war against Egypt and occupied the Sinai. And in 1981, when the
Polish government moved to suppress Solidarność, Menachem Begin was quick to
enact within a single day the annexation of the Golan Heights.

Uri Ariel, Minister of
Housing and Construction in the Netanyahu government, tried his best to
continue the tradition. With the world focused on Syria, he inaugurated a new
settlement called "Leshem" , in the northern part of the West Bank,
where forty settler families entered solemnly into their new homes . The guest
of honor at the ceremony was the minister, and his words left no room for doubt
: "This is a moving occasion, the laying down of one more brick in the
building of the Land of Israel. Let me say it in the clearest way: I'm here in
order to build you a home. We are building here in Leshem another 300
housing units. The Jewish People needs apartments everywhere in the country,
and we can meet everybody’s needs! This is the right thing to do, from the
Zionist as well as the socio-economic point of view. Anyone who is
present here today can understand why the two-state vision is unrealistic and
will not happen. It should be obvious to any thinking person: there will be no
two states west of the Jordan River. Such a thing will not happen. Even if we
are involved in negotiations, this is not on the agenda”.

And of course, Minister
Uri Ariel did not neglect to claim the moral high ground and from that
location arouse the conscience of the world against the war crimes taking place
in Syria. “Go to the murderous doctor of Damascus and leave alone the Israeli
settlement enterprise.”

There is no doubt that
the ongoing atrocities in Syria had the effect of distracting the world
from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Indeed, the media did
not pay much attention for example to what happened this week in the Kalandia
Refugee Camp north of Jerusalem.

“Entanglement" the
military authorities called it. "A detention operation which had gone
wrong”. Every night the army goes out on such operations, five to ten of them
at various locations throughout the West Bank. The goal is not to engage in
all-out confrontations with the Palestinians. Rather, the soldiers are to
arrive in the wee hours of the night to the door of a “wanted” person and as
quickly as possible get him, bound and blindfolded, into the waiting military
car . In many cases the force is able to leave the area before the neighbors
are aroused and get the detainee to interrogation under "moderate physical
pressure" at the facilities of the Shabak Security Service. One hardly
hears about such routine operations.

But for the second time
within one week such a routine detention went wrong, and local residents
rallied and took to the streets at this nightly hour and actively expressed
their opposition to the arrest of a neighbor by the occupation army’s soldiers.
As per routine, the force came to the Kalandia Refugee Camp to arrest a
“wanted” Palestinian, in this case a person who had just a month ago been
released from prison in Israel . On what charges was he wanted ? This we cannot
know. The regulations issued by the Commanding General (Center), who is since
1967 the sovereign legislator in the West Bank, do not require detaining
officers to inform the detainee what he is suspected of, nor does he have the
right to call a lawyer.

Some unfortunate
disruption happened and the operation did not proceed smoothly. Within minutes
the Kalandia Camp was aroused. The soldiers - artillery soldiers converted into
detentions troops – faced a large and angry crowd , first numbering some three
hundred and swiftly increasing to as many as 1500. "There was a very
violent riot, the military jeeps were pelted from the roofs with stones, iron
bars, and even burning carpets and washing machines" stated the military
communiquי. Whereupon the soldiers opened fire and
killed three residents of the camp - Jihad Aslan, 21, Yunis Jahjuh, 24, and
Rubin Zayed, 34.years old and a father of four.

”It was an act of
self-defense" said the IDF Spokesperson – which does have some plausibility,
as long as one assumes that the Israeli military has the right to enforce its
rule. Probably, the Palestinians in Kalandia saw themselves as acting in
self-defense against armed intruders, representatives of an oppressive
occupation rule which had imposed itself on them for 46 years. But such a way
of seeing things did not get expressed in the Israeli media.

Coincidentally or not,
the settlement inauguration by Minister Uri Ariel and the deadly raid on
Kalandia both occurred on the day before the scheduled third meeting in the
series of renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. There was an
angry mood among Palestinians, and the bureau of President Mahmoud Abbas
announced the cancellation of the negotiations meeting: ''The string of Israeli
crimes, and the continued settlement activities, constitute a clear message
about Israel’s true intentions regarding the peace process.” In the end , the
meeting did take place on that day. In fact, it was the first time that the
peace talks were held in Palestinian territory, in Jericho.

What was said there, in
the peace talks held at the same time that three funerals were held in
Kalandia? What was the atmosphere? By the rules prescribed by the Secretary of
State John Kerry, the lid was kept on and no information given to the media. In
fact, the media did not show any great interest in what was kept hidden. And
probably John Kerry himself, the man who initiated and pressured Israelis and
Palestinians to meet and talk, was this week busy with other things and only
skimmed the report submitted to him of the meeting in Jericho.

On the following day,
however, news came of a very different and unexpected kind of a meeting between
Israelis and Palestinians. A group of combat soldiers of the Rotem
Battalion of the Givati ​​Brigade patrolled the Ja’bari Neighborhood of Hebron.
Suddenly they heard, coming from a Palestinian wedding held in one of the
houses, the famous “Gangnam Style” of the South Korean singer PSY. The
song which had swept young people across the globe, regardless of
religion, race and nationality, also swept the patrolling soldiers. Against
orders and in contravention of their set task, the soldiers decided to enterthe hall and join
dozens of celebrating young Palestinians. These were from the Jabari Clan who
are defined by the military authorities as “Hamas supporters”, but who did
welcome the soldiers and invite them to join the dance.

The publication of this
event on Channel 2 of Israeli TV, and especially the video showing
soldiers carried on the shoulders of dancing young Palestinians, aroused
the ire of the military authorities. Unlike the soldiers who shot and killed at
Kalandia, defined as having acted in accordance with the military orders and
regulations, the entire patrol of dancing soldiers from Hebron were suspended
and are expected to be punished severely. "This is a very serious
incident. The soldiers are being interrogated, the brigade and battalion
commanding officers are conducting an investigation and the soldiers will be
treated accordingly”.

The event could have
ended differently, the military authorities asserted. The young Palestinians
might have also attacked the soldiers who entered the wedding celebration, to
injure or kill or kidnap them. Not a completely baseless assertion . Still,
what did happen was different. For a single moment, the soldiers did not come
to the Palestinians as occupation troops but as fellow young fans of the South
Korean PSY . And for that moment , the Palestinians received them as such.